6:30am. Waikiki Beach. Waves lapping along the shore as you move through your vinyasa. Light rain falling. Amazing.
Doing yoga on the beach is like nothing I have ever experienced. It's more challenging in some ways because you can't anchor yourself like you can on a hard floor - the surface, sand, is always shifting and moving under your weight. So you really have to balance. But in another way, you can kind of maneuver yourself into stability by using the sand as a prop.
We used mats to do the lying down poses and stretching (I had to laugh at myself for kicking sand in my own face a few times). Then for the standing poses and vinyasas, we rolled up our pants and went right down to the water's edge. We did our DFD's with our backs to the water, and rolled through our chatarangas on a slight slope, which was really hard. When it came time to do balancing, we faced the ocean and got into tree pose, and then held hands in a line formation to help each other balance. I few people stopped by and joined in, which was cool.
The sound of the surf and the feel of the breeze were so refreshing. When you closed your eyes, it was wonderful to concentrate on those natural sounds. When class finished, the rain started coming down HARD, but I enjoyed it. It's a warm rain, and I walked the mile back to the studio taking my time and feeling how awake and alive my body felt.
